


Sons Are Like Birds

by Kalael



Series: Sons and Brothers [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:15:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalael/pseuds/Kalael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mother never stops worrying, no matter how old her children get.  Jack is a good boy but someday he will be a man, and she can’t hold onto him forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sons Are Like Birds

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if this has popped up as updated, I was doing some minor edits.
> 
> Title taken from the lyrics of Upward Over the Mountain by Iron & Wine.
> 
> (I would suggest listening to the song before or during your reading of this)

A mother never stops worrying, no matter how old her children get. Jack is fourteen now and he sounds just like his father, but his limbs are too long and he’s as clumsy as a newborn foal. He will be graceful someday, his mother tells herself, even as he bangs his elbows into doors and knocks his knees on the chairs. Someday (she relies so much on ‘somedays’) he would grow into his body but for now he has to learn to carry himself on too-thin legs, catching himself on the shepherd’s crook his grandfather gave him.

They don’t farm sheep here but Jack has a natural instinct for herding children. His mother watches with simultaneous adoration and exasperation as he gathers his sister and cousins and neighbors around him to regale them with a tall tale of golden warriors. She can’t complain because though Jack likes to play, he is a good boy who finishes his chores before he kisses her cheek and runs outside with bare feet. His sister admires him, and the rest of the children see him as their brother as well. He plays pranks and gets scolded for them, but he is a good boy. He will grow into a good man someday. He will be a good father, someday.

After the big fall harvest there is a snow storm so powerful that the old oak tree across the fields is torn from the ground, dead rotting roots upended to face the sky. Icicles hang from the lifeless wood and Jack takes them for swords, running through the village hollering war cries as an army of children follows him to battle invisible foes. Jack’s mother watches from the doorway, smiling even as she yells after them to be careful. They disappear into the forest with echoing laughter. Jack’s voice rises over the rest, “We will!”

She trusts him.

Jack’s father is often absent at this time of year, busy hunting and fur trading to make sure that they will eat well and be warm when the heavy snow falls in January. Jack should have taken up the role as the man of the house but he likes to be a child, and his mother doesn’t fault him for that. Someday Jack will have his own house to run, but for now he can play. They work well, their small family, and a mother only wants her children to be happy. So when Jack’s father comes home to tell her that he will be gone for all of December, they agree to give their Christmas presents early so they can spend that special moment as a family.

Jack and his sister are elated by the ice skates presented to them. An expensive gift for sure, but Jack’s mother and father know they will be well used. The next morning Jack’s father leaves, hugging his children tight and kissing his wife goodbye (and they tease Jack for sticking out his tongue, because someday he will fall in love too).

It grows colder in the following days but it’s not as cold as it was the year before, and Jack’s mother frets when he decides to take his sister out to skate. She can’t change their minds and there isn’t any harm in letting them go for a little while. Jack is a good boy but someday he will be a man, and she can’t hold onto him forever. As they leave, with Jack’s sister tugging excitedly on his arm, his mother stands in the doorway and tells him to be careful. He smiles at her, reassuring in his childish way; “We will.”

She trusts him.

She is mending a pair of Jack’s pants when his sister comes running through the door, twigs in her hair and bare bleeding feet. Words aren’t exchanged. They run into the woods together, screaming for the men to follow. Jack’s mother does not wait for them, though she can hear them clamoring behind her. The pond is deeper in the woods than she remembers, and she forgot her shoes.

She slides across the ice on her belly, her heart pounding as she nears the hole where her son has fallen through. Someone else breaks through the line of trees and they’re shouting at her but she can’t hear them. Jack isn’t visible until she slides right to the edge of the hole, ice cracking beneath her but bearing her weight. With a cry she plunges her arms into freezing water, grasping for her son’s still body. The ice cracks further. The noise around her is drowned out by the feverish beating of her own heart. Her fingers catch on fabric, his short cloak, and she pulls.

His head is above the water now and she bites back a wail, trying to get him out of the freezing pond. Someone slides next to her, one of the village men, and he helps her bring Jack onto the ice. They shuffle carefully backward, pulling Jack with them, and he’s paler than frost. Her feet hit solid ground and she is hauled up and wrapped in furs. Her son is not moving.

She sobs, falling to her knees and covering his frozen body with her own. They are pulling at her again, trying to take her away from the body of her son, but she holds fast as she cries. It’s dark by then, a full moon providing light because no one remembered a torch, and no one needs to ask to know that they were too late.

The ground is too hard for the shovels to break the soil.

Someday the snow will melt, and there will be a cross for his grave.

(Someday he would leave her, but someday came too soon.)


End file.
